Tag Archives: pruning

Buying A First Home

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Realtor.com quoted me in Buying Your First Home? Better Make Sure It Has These 4 Things. It opens,

Finding the perfect starter home is a journey as well as a destination. You’ve got to know what you want, then adjust expectations to meet the reality of the market. In the end, you don’t have to settle on your “forever home”—just a place you’ll call home for at least five to seven years.

But that’s a long time in homeowner years, especially if you wake up each day in a place you wind up hating.

“You want to buy something that’s going to last,” says Carol Temple, an Arlington, VA, Realtor® who loves helping newbies find their first home.

So how do you know what’s going to stand the test of (a decent amount of) time? You’ve never done this before. You’re taking a leap of faith that you have the money, skills, and temperament to maintain the biggest purchase of your life so far.

We know—it’s scary. And overwhelming. But there is a foolproof formula to picking the right starter home.

1. Manageable monthly expenses

If you’ve been renting all your adult life, you’ll be surprised by how much owning a home actually costs. There’s a mortgage, real estate taxes (usually wrapped into your mortgage), insurance premiums, utilities, and the drip-drip-drip of maintenance costs. And here’s the fun part: All these costs usually increase with time!

“New homeowners are often not aware of how expenses can add up when they own a home,” says David Reiss, who teaches real estate law at Brooklyn Law School in Brooklyn, NY.

When calculating how much you can spend on a house, figure in all these costs, and then add a little more for unexpected expenses. Like replacing LED lightbulbs at $20 a pop. Or hiring a pro to prune that gorgeous oak in the backyard. Or maybe replacing your Grand Palais range that spontaneously combusted.

Make sure your final choice truly fits your budget. Got it? That may mean buying something smaller, older, or farther out than you originally intended.

2. Low maintenance

Maintenance costs are the great unknown in homeownership—the older the house, the more it will cost to keep running. So unless you have the handyman skills and desire to fix whatever comes up, it’s better for your starter house to be newer construction (less than 10 years old).

You may even want to consider brand-new construction, which costs more but whose parts are typically covered by a warranty. Standard coverage would be a one-year warranty for labor and materials, two years’ protection for mechanical defects—plumbing, electrical, heating, air conditioning, and ventilation systems—and 10 years for structural defects.

Whether you buy a new or existing home, don’t forget to hire a good home inspector to thoroughly identify potential problems.

“Even if the home buyers are handy, they may not want to be spending their time up on the roof looking for a leak or in the basement up to their knees in water,” Reiss says.

Money ‘n Trees

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Money quoted me in 4 Things to Know Before You Prune a Tree. It opens,

It turns out money does grow on trees. Mature specimens can add 10% or more to your property value, according to Greenwich, Conn., arborist and tree appraiser Scott Cullen. But trees can cost big money, too—if a giant oak falls and crushes your garage during the next big storm, for example. Here’s what you need to know about maintaining the trees on your property.

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Understand insurance coverage

In urban and suburban neighborhoods, it’s common for trees to grow along property lines. As a general rule, the owner of the property where the tree meets the ground is the owner of the tree—and responsible for it, says real estate attorney and professor of law at Brooklyn Law School David Reiss. If you own an obviously diseased and dying tree that falls and damages a neighbor’s house or, worse, hurts someone, you could be financially liable for the damage. But in general, if it’s a healthy tree that has been routinely cared for and inspected by a professional, the owners of the property that gets damaged by your tree will likely be covered by their own insurance for damage to their buildings or vehicles.

Know your right to prune

Just as leaves and branches that fall on your land are yours to clean up, regardless of whose tree they came from, you also generally have the right to trim any part of a tree that’s on your property. So if a limb from your neighbor’s tree is bringing squirrels onto your roof or dropping walnuts onto your new car, you are within your rights to have the limb removed. You can’t cut it beyond your property line, however, and if any trimming you do were to kill the tree (or render it unstable or unhealthy), you could be liable for paying its owner for lost value.

In any case, living by the letter of the law is rarely the best solution when it comes to neighborhood relations. Discuss tree issues with all parties involved before anyone fires up a chainsaw, says Reiss. If a tree is yours—in other words, if it leaves the ground in your yard—it’s essentially your tree and your responsibility to keep properly maintained and pruned. Even if you technically aren’t responsible for shaping the limbs over on the neighbor’s side, the increased cost for doing that while a tree guy is on site is well worth the good relations it will engender. If the tree trunk splits the property line, discuss the needed tree work and ask your neighbor to split the bill.